


Hope

by EllieCarina



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Smutlet, post baltimore state hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 05:52:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana takes Will home from the Baltimore State Hospital. Somehow they find each other quicker than anticipated. Smutlet. One Shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This is cross-posted to tumblr (jackpotgirl) and my first ever work published on AO3. I'm excited to see how things work here. If you enjoyed the fic, leave me a heart and I will be one happy butterfly. :)

# Hope

 _Pairing_ : Will/Alana

 _Summary_ : Alana takes Will home from the Baltimore State Hospital. Somehow they find each other quicker than anticipated. Smut.

***

The light came on with a stutter and Alana Bloom let out a tiny sigh of relief. She had paid the last electric bill for Will’s house about a month too late. It was no surprise considering everything that had been going on that she would forget the upkeep of his abandoned house while he was at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He had never asked her to do that but as it was with his dogs, she could not help but help.

Will Graham entered the house on ginger feet with his dogs rushing past him into their old territory. It felt good being back home. Despite the hazy uncomfortable memories he had of this place - memories that kept him firmly away from the kitchen - it was still his home. It was still somewhat intact, somewhat untouched by all that had happened. Very different from himself who was soiled thoroughly. The house was a little spotted here and there but not so much that you couldn’t ignore it if you squeazed an eye shut. It was still his boat on the sea.

He watched Alana as she walked through each room downstairs, turning the lights on one by one. He wondered if he had ever mentioned to her that he did that sometimes, to light his own way or so it were; to light the darkness looming in the back of his mind - or if she did it by instinct. Either way, he felt an almost painful surge of affection for her. He was fairly used those by now though, he got them a lot. Especially since she had finally come around to believing him that he wasn’t a killer.

The day she came to him, breezing down the aisle of cells, past shouting rapists and knife murderers, down all the way to the last one on the left. With her shoes ticking a defiant rhythm, he knew it was her from a mile off. He had not really dared believe about her changed mind but then she announced that they’d win in court and that he was going to get out of there until the evidence against him could be made more conclusive and less circumstantial. Will had wanted to burst through the bars to kiss her. There was a pull so harsh, violent and demanding, he had nearly toppled over. 

Now that she had brought him back to his house, an electronic shackle around his ankle (to keep him from fleeing the country) all that was left of his incarceration, that pull was still there. It pulled on him past his medication, past his tiredness, past his weariness and even past his terror and fear. It was the only thing stronger than his anxiety and unease. Stronger yet than the panic of Hannibal Lecter who was still free to roam around the world. It had pushed aside worries of reality slipping, of not being who he always was. How much he wanted Alana…that was what surpassed it all.

She had helped nurse him back to sanity, she had estinguished the fire in his head. He still saw things sometimes, flashes of wild imagination and his dreams were castles. But sometimes she was in there with him. Sometimes he could summon her there with just his will, to light the night. There was a room in his dream palace where he could find her. The thought of her finding out about this made him blush…or rather, the thought of her knowing what they did in his dreams sometimes, did.

Alana was putting a blanket on Will’s couch and shooing one or two dogs away when she felt him come up behind him. He kept his old and tried distance to her. She’d noticed long ago that he didn’t come too close unless he felt invited into her space. It was either that he was afraid of her rejection, of a rebuff that would somehow feel physical - cause physical pain even - or that he was afraid of losing control when he got too near. If she were honest the latter possibility excited her more and in more concerning ways than she chose to admit. Sometimes, in the dead of night she secretly wished he would just grab her and not let her reason away from him. She should be beyond trying to convince herself that she did not love him body and soul, against all self-given advice or circumstance, but somehow she still tried to.

Finally she turned around to look at him, really look. It was the first time she had done so since picking him up from the hospital where she had walked him to her car under the groveling, thin-lipped disaproval of Dr. Chilton.

He stood an arms length away from her now, dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a grey woolen shirt that she had bought for him on the way over. She had guessed his size and hadn’t been too far off although the pants hung a little too low on his narrow hips and the shirt in turn was a little too tight. He did not seem to mind though. He did not concern himself too much with fashion. What concerned Alana more than fashion herself, were the bags under his eyes and how deflated his cheeks looked. While the rest of him had stayed in shape somehow, his face looked sourly underfed and over-medicated. It would be a tough job weening him off the various meds Chilton and Hannibal, for whatever puzzling reasons, had put him on. His skin had a grey sheen to it and she wondered how he could still be so attractive to her, even like this. She felt horrible for it.

She should feel the need to nurse him back to sturdy health - and she did, but she also wanted to run her hands up his neck and his jaw and feel his beard stubble under her fingers and kiss the shadows from his face. Sometimes, in the consuming darkness of too many hours on her own, she worried that his cracks where what made him so attractive. That some sadistic bone throbbed in her that took pleasure out of the idea she could be the only one to save him, or that it was just helpers syndrom. She did not want to be that person. She wanted him healthy and happy and sane. She wanted to want him for him - even if she was the only person on earth who did.

Will kept his eyes trained on Alana’s collar bone. He was not quite ready for her eyes yet. He did not really want to know what look he’d find there. He expected pity but he feared residue fear or alienation and he could not handle that from her just yet.

"Well, here we are," she said then into a silence that gained weight by the second. A sigh was worked in there somewhere and he nodded faintly in response.

"Will?" She took a micro step forward but he picked it up anyway, "I have been wanting to give you a hug since approximately three months ago. Do you think you could endulge me?"

That unexpected declaration  _did_  make him look up after all. But there was no fear painting her features, no alienation, residue orotherwise. He noticed instantly. Instead there was a hint of elation, tension around the eyes indicating stress and concearn but also a sense of - was it longing? - or  _need_  in her eyes. There was also a bit of hope and pity and something he would name love if he dared believe Alana Bloom could still feel something reminiscent of love for him. He staggered forward, clumsy and a bit awkward but his arms were open for her. She did the rest of the work, closing the distance and wrapped her arms around him. She was warm, welcoming and she held him tight like a mother would a fearful child asking for monsters under their bed. It was bordering on uncomfortable but he decidedly managed.

He could sense how much it meant to her. She was right, in part it was an endulgance, something she did to make herself feel better. She believed he believed she had abandoned him and was now trying to repent, to make up for it. But Will had forgiven her a lifetime ago. Even if he had not, he would now, seeing how eagerly she tried to fix him, like she could could him back into place with her own hands.

He could feel her heartbeat quicken through her tight floral-patterned dress and her chest heaved with deep breaths, breasts pushing against his ribs while her fingers snaked into the curls on his neck. _I really need a haircut_ , he thought stupidly, a single odd thought between all the wonder of having her so close again. The rest of his brain was wrapped up entirely in the moment for once. He had wondered about this, imagined it so many different ways. Always alone in his cell, always alone in his noisy head. Reality was putting his head to shame. Her scent alone was exhilarating.

He tried to read her, analyze her movements while she was making them but he did not really trust his instinct. His instinct was making him feel queazy, excited and expectant of some sort of physicality, his body reacted accordingly. It was an instant reaction, a response to a shift in the air, in the universe that had come from nothing and everything at once. He got gossebumps on his neck where she touched him and his breathing hitched unasked for. But maybe he was just imagining this. Maybe he was rehashing something he made up, projecting, wishing so badly that it almost seemed real.

His cock twitched not entirely uncomfortably and from there spread vibrant heat from his belly to his toes and from his toes to his earlobes. The hug had left the realm of friendship and entered the territory of sex in less than a heartbeat. By now it was hard to deny. How _real_ it was. It felt real.

And his senses; his body had picked up - but his brain could not make sense of it. Why would Alana do that? Why would her body betray her own rationality like that? She had told him so many times that she would not enter a physical relationship with him until he was stable…and three hours fresh out of a mental hospital did not really qualify him as such. It was so confusing, he’d almost chuckled. That would have certainly made him seem exceptionally sane.

And yet, if he could allow himself a twinge of hope, he would argue that it had been so long that they were deprived of each other and that she had fought for him like a lioness and that her feelings for him might have, irrationally but undeniably, maybe, grown into something louder than her sound reasons. While all of this was going on in his head, Will’s body slipped just the tiniest bit out of his resolve and into its place.

In that he shifted her in his arms by winding one arm up her backside, his fingers curling into her hair, cradling the back of her head while the other wound around her waist and pulled her up and flush against him. Her scent was overwhelming as his cheek found a snug place just beneath her ear, his nose positively burried in her long hair and his lips vibrating with the blood cursing through her vanes. Alana gasped and her pulse quickened. Will’s body began to drown out his head.

When Will finally hugged Alana back she was rattled by her immediate response. She had expected to feel relief and a sense of achievement; that he would allow her a bit of his burden, that she could hold him and offer him a bit of stability, an anchor after all this time of deprivation. She hadn’t expected the coiled up ball her insides had snapped into as soon as he did. And she had not expected to feel a distinct bulge in his pants, pressing up against her. She guessed it wasn’t surprising really but the fact that she was instantly burning up and pushing her hips against him reflexively had been an unanticipated reaction on her part.

She saw red flashes in front of her eyes and her reasonable self was banging on the inside of her skull. She yelled to cut it out and make for the woods, to pour ice water over her body and leave Will in peace but Alana could not, for the life of her, move her feet. It had been too long. She had wanted to touch him and hold him and be with him for too long for her body not to wrestle the brittle self-control she had left, away. Something in the air changed. It felt electric, as if the air could erupt into sparks, into fire, at any moment.

She hummed against him when his lips fell on her neck. It was like a rush that went through her that rendered all sense of sanity useless. In that moment she wanted him so violently that it finally startled her out of her dizziness.

"We shouldn’t," she said. She said it but she made no move away from him, "..should not get carried away."

"I know," Will said, his legs never giving way either.

"We absolutely must not," she mumbled and turned her face to where he had just breathed on the sensible, prickling skin of her neck and caught his lips in a whisper, "…unethical"

"Unstable," he said against her lips, his tounge darting out after the last syllable. The world was on fire. 

"Gonna be so," she met him half way, "complicated."

And then they were kissing and it tasted like inevitability.

Will only processed half of it. His head was spinning. He was overwhelmed with trying to make sense of it all while fighting all kinds of overpowering sensations. She tasted like orange tic tacs and her lower body was leaning heavily against his, too much to be un-deliberate. She smelled like soap, unassuming perfume and faintly of nervous sweat. The back of his knees crashed against the couch, making him loose his balance until he fell backwards onto it, onto his buttocks. She eased into the fall and landed on him with a leg around either side of him.

He let out a sharp breath, more and more over his head while they continued to kiss each other with such needy hunger that he forgot to breathe. Lightheaded, he stuttered her name into her mouth and finally came up for air. But the did not want it to end, not yet. Selfish as he was, after long enough with little oxygen to his brain, when his primal needs outweighed his sensibility, he attached his lips to her neck, where she had responded so eagerly earlier, and bucked his hips up to meet hers.

Alana groaned, a raspy, vulgar sound that made him instantly hard, aided also by her fingernails grazing his scalp. Half a heartbeat later, she met his hips in a make-shift rhythm.

Cursing a choice four letter word under her breath, he figured she was somehow trying to hold herself back because her movements sputtered to a brief halt for one second but then resumed just as quickly. Couldn’t she stop? Could that be? He opened his eyes in a flash, suddenly not so sure that he was awake. Was she not going to break it off after all?

"Is this real?" he asked into her hair, somewhat drowsily desperate, "Am I awake?"

"Uh-huh," Alana nodded more than she actually talked. "Will, we shouldn’t be doing this."

"I know," he repeated feebly, "but why…I forgot."

"I missed you so much," she said like that was an answer, "every day, every time I looked at the dogs and thought they were the only ones who understood, every time I closed my eyes…I’m so sorry I let you down."

"I missed you too," he said, "It’s okay, you don’t have to…"

"Just kiss me again, Will," she pleaded nudging his cheek with hers, "please, just make me stop thinking, I want you so bad. I don’t wanna be smart right now."

Will knew this was his last chance, his last opportunity to do the dignified thing, the right thing and to get them both off that train. The moment Alana Bloom asked to throw caution onto the tracks, things had gone entirely too far. If they stayed on, he could not anticipate where it would take them. The consequences…the way she would become even more of a possible means to getting to him. The danger which lay in that.

But she was so close and he was fogging up fast with lust and a howling need to claim her, make her his, consume and posess her and he had gone so long wanting little else. Gone so long with wanting her and not having her. And he had gone without any woman so long, it was hard to remember the last time, his body was yearning for release. Sharp fingernails were still scratching his skin and it was as painful as it was riveting and  _christ_ , his cock was so hard, he thought he might come undone just then.

So he kissed her and he kissed her for the entire time it took to grab her by the ass, stand up and carry her up the stairs to his bedroom and send all reasons and precautions to hell. He did not now where he got his strength from but to him, she weighed less than a feather.

Somehow Alana ended up in Will’s bedroom, on his muted blue sheets and she only noticed when she opened her eyes, on her back and he towered over her. With half his weight on her, knees between her legs, she caught his eye and held her breath because suddenly her whole world came to a halt.

Her sound mind found its way back to the surface and everything went dead silent, safe for her blood rushing past her ears and his huffed little pants. His erection was pressed against her thighs and she felt her own arousal tantalizingly demanding, hungry and wet and building up and threatening to drag her moment of clarity away by the hair.

She could see him struggling as well. He maintained eye-contact, for longer than he ever had and it almost seemed to her like he was pulling himself out of a reverie of sorts - like she was an anchor. And then she knew what the right thing to do was. It fell like scales from her eyes and suddenly everything made sense.

Alana prayed that he would not look away again now that it did. She wanted this connection, needed it to go on. And for the first time since she had known Will Graham, his eyes never strayed from hers. His lips were parted and she could almost hear the gears grinding in his head, trying to anticipate what she had realized, which coin had dropped. And more importantly, where it had fallen. On which side of the state line.

She did not let him wonder much longer. Instead, she reached between them and unbuttoned his jeans. She was making swift work of it too and kept looking at him. Even when she turned them around and loomed above to remove the offending fabric entirely. He was still wearing his shirt when his boxers had to go. His cock flipped free, pointing up stubbornly in the corner of her eye but she never risked a glance, she stayed with Will and would until he looked away. But he never did.

There was wonder in his eyes and pride, confusion too and a bit of shock but he was intent on her, focused. His eyes spoke lengths, miles and miles and miles. She loved him. She knew it. If she had not before, she loved him now and would. Probably forever.

Without looking away, she slipped out of her panties and hiked up her dress. She took a deep breath and braced herself. What came next felt like a gunshot and an entire eternity, all rolled up into one endless eruption of nerves and tingles. Alana bit her lips and took hold of him, aligning them swiftly and then she slid down on him. She had become tighter in the years of abstinance but she was slick and ready for him so it never hurt. It simply heightened the sensation. It made her too eager to bother with foreplay. Her mouth dropped open in a soundless moan, she was finally all the way down.

Will gasped, as if his lungs were bereft of air, and something exploded in his eyes that made the rest of his face fall into a quivering  _woah_  like a bunch of dominoes. He was still looking at her.

"Oh," Alana muttered, "ummm, I…uh…"

She did not know what she meant to say as she started rocking her hips back and forth and up and down. Every nerve-ending was over-responsive, every fiber and every inch of her body sensitive and yearning for him and all of it was made even more instense with the way he ate her up with his eyes.

Will forgot how to breathe. He was mezmerized, caught up in her eyes at last. She was riding him with a slow and deliberate pace, letting him in deeper with every push. Her walls stretched and clenched impossibly tight around him and the only thing that kept him from cumbusting right then was the hold of her stare. He had finally let himself look, let himself see. And now he could see himself, and see through her eyes and  _see_  her. At long last, he could see into her past all the layers. She let him into her sould the way she let him into her body. Completely, freely and in abundance. The physicality of it was seemless, despite the long absence both of them had from the matter. They clicked into place like cogs in a well-oiled machine.

On other nights in his life he had been unsure about his performance in bed. While his empathy had sometimes helped anticipate wishes and interpret signals, he had always been somewhat clumsy and shut off. He did not like being bare and you could only really be a good lover if you let yourself be vulnerable. Will did not like being vulnerable. It took a special kind of person to get him to strip himself off his layers of protection.

But Alana had always been one of these people. She was his person and he knew her. Now better than he’d ever had and he also knew just how much she had held herself back from loving him. He wondered what would happen if she would tuck herself back up again, take these feelings back into the shadows of her heart. He would never be able to forget that they were there now.

He would always know how much she really cared. He hoped fervently that he would not have to find out how it’d feel when she took that unexpected paradise away again. Because what he saw and felt now was wonderous and grand. It tucked at every heartstring and filled him with a dully aching warmth. His stomach was contracting with it, his legs quivering. And then she smiled at him, small at first and then it turned into a grin, bright like the fourth of July. He loved her. God, he loved her so much it turned his insides around, twirled them into a jumble.

His throat closed off and he feared that he might do something stupid, like cry. Or maybe he would throw up. He held on to her eyes right until he didn’t. Without planning to, he looked away from her, following a rash move of her hand. It flew from his chest to the center of their bodies. She worked her fingers quickly into her skin, parting her lips and rubbing her pink, swollen flesh.

He was transfixed by it all. Her moans and the way she sped up their movements, upped the pace and threw her head into her neck. The way her fingers came back shiny and what little obscene sounds she made. He bit down on his lips hard and closed his eyes, trying to find some purchase within himself, trying to keep it together. He would fall apart in a matter of minutes if she went on like this. 

"Look at me," Alana commanded and his eyes flew back open like he was bid.

With fingers still working on herself, she stubbornly stared him down while her muscles began to spasm around him. Her cheeks flushed red and she slamed her body onto him two, three more times and then her mouth gaped open in a silent scream, her eyes bulging and her body shook in waves. She said his name in a high pitched last sigh and grabbed a fistful his hair with her free hand, dragging his head and his body up to her. There was the pain that comes with hair pulling but somehow that only worked to push Will even closer to the edge. He kissed her, madly, blindly.

"Let it go," she nodded and sunk down on him one last time and Will obliged. He grabbed her hard by her thighs, digging so deep into her flesh she was sure to leave bruises and pulled her onto him, pushed into her once and twice and then he grabbed her hair and pulled her head back so he could look at her. Will held on to her crystal blue eyes as if they were a lighthouse and then he surrendered himself to the windy, relentless sea. He unraveled, his face first, from a thin-lipped, desperate scowl into oblivion. Then the rest followed.

His orgasm hit him like a ton of bricks, ripping him almost in half. He never looked away, he couldn’t. He might have gotten entirely lost in his head and never gotten back.There were a million things at once happening in his body and brain and at the same time he was completely void and utterly unafraid for the first time in years. It was mayhem, chaos, order, purpose, love and the sweetest sense of home, of arrival. If he had ever believed in the concept of souls, now he thought he could feel his own for the first time.

"Alana," Will muttered at last and the way he said it almost made her come again. It sounded like a prayer. She smiled lazily and let him set her pace with his fingers pressed into her thighs and waited until he had savoured his orgasm and finally brought her to a still, having her linger a couple of endless moments before he leaned in again, simultaneously kissing and untangling her from him. Will lifted her up and put her back down gently beside him. Only then did he take off his sweaty shirt and Alana followed him, stripping out of her dress and bra. Will chuckled.

"That was kind of backwards," he laughed with a tiny voice and threw their discarded clothes off the bed before wrapping her in his arms. He smelled musky and sweaty and manly in the best way. Alana nuzzled against his warmth and took a long while to breathe him in and try to remember his scent. She never wanted to forget this moment.

This was right, this was her place. For better or for worse, no matter how long it would take to figure out what had happened to Will during the last year, her place was by his side. She sighed with contempt and Will draped a soft blanket over their naked, radiating bodies. Alana snook a peek up at him and Will immediately registered and gave her a feathery kiss on the head. 

"I don’t think this was a mistake at all," Alana said.

"No," Will agreed, "I…the way you looked at me, I could tell."

"Tell what?"

"That you…how you feel about me," Will mumbled into her hair, he sounded happy, spent, peaceful and very pleased with himself.

"And how exactly do I feel about you?" Alana nudged his cheek with her nose teasingly, "Mr. Empathy?"

Will turned to his side so he was facing her again and her heart leapt so high it almost hurt. Outside the sun was going down and he touched his fingertips to her lips, his gaze once again locked firmly on hers.

"You love me," he stated and the first cheeky smile for months painted his face brighter than the sun.

"You truly have a gift, Will Graham," Alana conceded. She had expected this moment to be terrifying, horrific in all it entailed, all the consequences and sensible advice thrown into the wind. But it wasn’t scary at all. It wasn’t even a little bit hard. 

"I love you, Will," she said and nothing had ever been easier.

"I love you," Will said deliberately slow, "Have since I met you, I think."

"I tried to keep away from you," she admitted, "I would not be alone in a room with you because I knew you could completely derail me."

"Do you feel derailed?" Their voices were hardly louder than whispers.

"Not anymore," Alana kissed him lightly, "For the first time in months I feel like I’m back on track, actually."

"Me too," and Will grinned, as happy as she had ever seen him.

Alana smiled, weightless and drunk on love and sex and Will’s bed smell. This would be her source of strength, her remedy. Really, she should have known before, the only way the two of them would get through the things ahead, was together. And somehow, although she had always claimed to be hopeful before, that moment, wrapped in Will’s arms, naked and delirious, was the first time she really felt it.  _Hope_.


End file.
